Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1887-10-11
A VERY SINGULAR RIVER.
An Anomaly in Nature - But Little
Changed Since the Day of Its Birth.

An Anomaly in Nature . But Little
Changed Since the Day of Its Birth.
As / said, | know know not what to
call this Saguenay. Rivers have banks,
but it has none; for lofty and precipitous
cliffs, mountains of rock, preclpices that
rise 1000 feet sheer upward from the
tide and beetling crags-these cannot,
without misuse Of language, be called
river banks. Nor is it fit to call it a
stream, for stream is a line of flowing
water smaller than a river, and the Sague-
nav is one from and half to two miles
wide, and from 400 to 1000 feet in
depth, and all this monstrous depth of
water is IN motion. Nor is it an outlet
merely, for into it flows the surplus
water of Lake ST. John. But this lake is
shallow, not deep, and but little more
than half the length of the Saguenay,
and hence its fiowage, large as 1t is, Is
but 1.-THE, nay, only hundredth part
of what the latter holds and pours into
the ST. Lawrence daily. Hence, if we
call the Saguenay river, it is not be-
cause that word describes it or is proper
title to it, but because of its strange char
acteristics. 1t stands an anomaly in
nature, and there is no better name to
give it than to call it river.
Its waters are colored, nor is their color
like to any other river l have ever seen.
They have been called black by many
writers who have written of them, but
they are not black, but rather transparent
brown, like as common water is when
looked at through a smoked glass. l say
transparent, for they are very pure and
clear, and, dark as they are, the eye sees
deeply and easily into them. a white
stone or piece of tin can be perceived at
a great depth-as deeply down as they
might be in the waters of the Horizon,
which l have often thought were the
purest and the cleanest in the world.
Moreover, the sunbeams penetrate its
dark brown currents easily, and the long
lanes of light shot into the brown depths
by the solar rays look as the sunlight
looks when shining through the stained
windows of great cathedrals.
Whence its waters get this strange
quality, this indescribably gloomy and
sinister tinge, none can say, and savants
do not even pretend to guess, for all the
currents which flow into it are mountain
streams and crystalline, and the contribu-
lions of the sea which the tidal lift pours
into it are clear and blue of tint. Nor
can it come from any coloring matter re-
leased by natures chemistry acting upon
Its rocky walls and bottom, for the nature
of these is known, and plain granite
quartz and gneisS are the dominant struct-
ures. But whatever be the cause of it,
the color Of its waters is, as | have de-
scribed, brown, with almost a purple
tinge, and has to the eye, seen from
distance, most grewsome look, gloomy
and sinister, as if it came from some
other world than ours, whose waters,
unless discolOred from causes discoverable
to us, are pure and sparkling.
Imagine, now, a vast volume of this
strange looking water, two miles in width,
1000 feet in depth, pouring out between
a monstrous opening between contiguous
mountains, made by some mighty throe
of nature, Travelling in agony, to bring
forth an awful birth; an opening which
Is not simply rent made through lofty
range, but as if long. high ridge Of
primeval rOck-rock old as the beginning
of the world-running north and south,
had been split apart along its entire length
of forty miles, exactly in the center. and
the two halves wedged violently apart
until the jagged, precipitous, cavernous
sides stood two miles asunder, and through
this tremendous opening, through the
very center of this huge ridge of rock, a
vast, deep, almost fathomless volume of
gloomy colored water began to flow, and
you have in your mind a fairly good pict-
ure Of What the Saguenay was at its birth,
and what it is today.
For of all rivers on the globe this, from
necessity, has changed the least. Here
and there the frost and heat, the SHOWS
and rains of 10, 900 years have worn down
the sharp edges and rounded the flinty
verge of overhanging precipices; here and
there the wash and wear of centuries
have deposited so much of soil that trees
can find a foothold, but save this all is
today on either hand, as you sail up its
darkling tide, as it was when first born
in natures darkest hour and sternest
agony, its gloomy currents began to boil
and whirl and flow. Every other river
on the face of the earth has changed its
banks and bed, but this strange river has
changed not at all, and cannot change
until the end of time.-W. II. II. Murray
~, Nax- NNO,lJ